'I think that is B.S:' Trump surrogate slapped down by CNN host who calls him a liar
Former President Donald Trump campaign surrogate Marc Lotter got into a heated argument with CNN's Jim Acosta over Trump's remarks about former Rep. Liz Cheney having to face down the barrels of nine guns.
In fact, Acosta flat-out accused Lotter of lying when he tried to defend Trump's latest violent rhetoric.
"I think that that is B.S.," Acosta told Lotter. "We don't talk about our political opponents being shot. We just don't do it. I mean, I guess some crackpot at the end of the bar can do it — but a presidential candidate, with days before a campaign, shouldn't say it."
Acosta of course was referring to Trump's comment to Tucker Carlson Thursday that he'd like to see former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) face the barrels of nine rifles.
Team Trump has been on heavy walk-back duty as they refute the claim the Republican presidential nominee — who has said the military should deal with his "enemies within" — was referencing a firing squad.
Lotter on Friday echoed what many conservatives have since argued, that Trump meant to suggest war hawk lawmakers should serve in the military, but Acosta argued it was beside the point.
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Acosta also made note of the fact that Trump got a highly suspicious deferment from the military draft during the Vietnam War due to a diagnosis of having bone spurs.
"If we were to go with your generous interpretation of all of this — which again I want to say for our viewers I don't think is true, I think that is a lie," he told Lotter. "It is a bit much, is it not, for Donald Trump to be calling people out for sending people off to war?"
Acosta argued this meant Trump didn't have a metaphorical leg to stand on — bone spurs or no — because the former president had broken a longstanding political tradition.
"It's kind of weak sauce to say that," Acosta said. "This is what separates the United States of America from other countries: we don't talk about our political opponents being shot."